ART 320 Global Encounters in Art

Overview of Course

Art can reflect the world—and it can also challenge it. In this course, you will explore how artists across cultures use art both to represent social issues and to engage in social change.
Using our voyage as a framework, you will encounter artworks and artists rooted in the communities we visit. Through in-port experiences and on-ship reflection, you will examine how place, history, and culture shape artistic production—and how meaning shifts depending on context, perspective, and your own position as a viewer.
You will learn to analyze and interpret artworks across cultural contexts, consider multiple viewpoints, and build evidence-based arguments using visual analysis and research. Along the way, you will reflect on your role as a viewer and how your experiences shape what you see, question, and understand.
Your work will culminate in a Photovoice project that combines image and text to analyze how art operates as both representation and action, and to construct arguments that invite others into dialogue across perspectives.